Nuclear Power

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10 Comments »

• Its not exactly environmentally friendly. What about the waste? Disposal of that waste? What about other options?

  Comment by Samantha — June 25, 2006 @ 6:21 am

• For well over 30 years France has been using breeder reactors to almost eliminate its nuclear waste. What we currently do is take uranium-238 and refine it into uranium-235 - when the U-235 is spent it is still radio active and has no real further use so we store the waste in containers deep underground.
  A breeder reactor uses the U-238 to produce Plutonium-239. When the Pu-239 is spent it reverts back to U-238 hence “breeding” its own fuel from the spent fuel.
  Both methods have their problems. Our current method produces the waste we both have concerns about - the breeder reactor produces Pu-239 - Pu-239 is what is used in nuclear weapons.
  Other modes of producing energy should continue to be developed and used. Solar power has a long way to go - costs are still very high and the return cannot meet the demands. Wind power has its benefits but the one thing traveling west that most sticks in my mind is not the majestic mountains but the miles of wind mills - interesting to look at but ugly and they don’t produce the levels of power to meet consumption. We need a combination of all these technologies and futher research into others.

  Comment by Ouch — June 25, 2006 @ 11:11 am

• Nuclear power plants contain their production wastes. Fossil fuel plants spew most of their waste out in the atmosphere, sharing it with the rest of the country and the world.

  US fuel is U238 enriched with 3 to 5% U235. U238 by itself cannot be used to produce power. When it is enriched with U235, the U235 will provide some of the fission. Even though the fuel we load into US nuclear power plants does not contain plutonium, a significant amount of the power produced. In the neutron flux of the reactor, some of the U238 goes through a process that results in plutonium-239, which can then fission to produce power.

  PU239 does not revert back to U238 when it is spent. The power produced by nuclear power is from the fissioning of the atom. When PU239, U235, or other fissile atoms absorb a neutron, the fission process results in two smaller atoms - called fission products - as well as neutrons, and other products - and energy. When the sum of all mass of the atoms and all of the other particles are added together, the total will be less than the original atom. The energy produced is –> E=mc2

  Nuclear waste is easily contained and can be disposed of safely in underground repositories for tens of thousands of years - longer than current human history. The primary problem is the politics - and those who oppose it without truely understanding it.

  How can I say that I understand it? My first exposure to nuclear power came in the late sixties in a demonstration provided in my high school on benificial applications of radioactivity. In 1971, I joined the US Navy and spent the next 9 1/2 years in the Navy Nuclear Power Program. In 1980 I went to work as an operator at a commercial nuclear power plant. I was licensed as a reactor operator and, later as a senior reactor operator, which I currently maintain. I also have a fair amount of experience with moving irradiated nuclear fuel.

  Am I for new nuclear power plants? Absolutely!

  Do I think they will be built in the United States? Not in the near future. Too much opposition to the workable solutions.

  Comment by Mike — June 25, 2006 @ 2:58 pm

• Thanks for the clairifications.

  I currently have 2 sons in the Navy Nuke program and my father also was an SRO at CR-3 in Cystal River then started on his own to sced refuelings and other outages around the country.

  Comment by Ouch — June 25, 2006 @ 3:46 pm

• If you have seen the children of Chernobyl, then you have your answer. No nuclear power plants.

  The radioactive waste cannot be stored in the ground where it might contaminate ground water.

  I am not willing to give the contract for disposal of wastes to a company like Halliburton or a government entity. Remember the shuttle? Remember Love Canal? Perhaps, you migt want to look at the Berkeley Pit in Butte, MT.

  Comment by CyberCelt — June 25, 2006 @ 5:21 pm

• Chernobyl was the result of a bad design and a bad political system. A test procdure was not followed, safty sytems were overriden to accomplish the test. When the test went awry, Chernobyl Unit 4, a RBMK reactor, was at low power, where the moderator temperature coefficient was positive. What this means is as the reactor gets hotter, reactor power tends to rise, unless controlled by some other reactivity control mechanism. Core temperature rose rapidly and the positiver moderator temeperature coefficient caused power to rise very rapidly, which added more energy to the core coolant. So much energy was added that a steam explosion occurred (NOT a nuclear explosion), virtually destroying the core’s cooling capability.

  In the Soviet RBMK reactor design, the moderator used is graphite - carbon - and, with no coolant, the graphite caught on fire, a fire so intense that the fuel melted and fision products were released to the local area… and to the world.

  The nuclear fuel used in most reactors throughout the world is encased in metal fuel rods arranged in “bundles” as a fuel assembly. The Crystal River Unit 3 reactor, mentioned earlier, has 177 fuel assemblies, about 12 feet long, and each fuel assembly has 208 fuel rods.

  The federal government was required by federal law to start receiving spent nuclear fuel from the nation’s nuclear power plants. Because this has not happened spent fuel is stored on each reactor site in spent fuel pools and in many instances, dry fuel casks.

  Nuclear fuel wastes are contained in the fuel rods and the fuel rods are contained in shielded casks. There is little probability of any contamination of ground water, especially in a site such as Yucca Mountain, which is specifically located and designed to eliminate the possibility.

  Nuclear power, done right, is a clean and green solution to the spewing of fossil fuel wastes that are contributing to the global warming of our planet.

  Comment by Mike — June 25, 2006 @ 7:01 pm

• Solar, wind, water, geothermal and fuel cell technology is enough IF we also use alternative fuel like biodiesel for our cars. I live outside of Austin, Texas and lots of people are living off the grid for years.

  If you are interested, please check this page on my website. It has links to many alternative energy sites. There is a biodiesel initiative in every state.

  http://www.usaer.com/energy.htm

  Here is another where you may read about different energies as they become a viable source.

  http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy_basics/

  God bless, se you on my next go round with surfing.

  Comment by CyberCelt — June 26, 2006 @ 5:00 am

• Hi Samantha (first comment): If we refuse nuclear, the major alternatives are coal, natural gas, and oil. Renewables are currently only capable of meeting about 20% of our energy needs…less if we go into plug-in hybrid cars and electric rail in a big way (which are good ideas).

  Coal and the fossil fuels are the cause of the environmental problems we are experiencing with global warming.

  You sound like you are happier with the global-warming coal and fossil fuel status quo than with educating yourself regarding nuclear generation.

  If you think of yourself as an environmentalist, you need to study the issue more closely. Then you will find out that the anti-nuclear special interest groups are NOT environmental groups.

  Perhaps you should consider working on land conservation issues, biodiversity, and forests, where the environmental organizations are actually working for the environment.

  Those who work with the anti-nuclear movement have tacitly enrolled in the pro-coal/pro fossil fuels movement.

  Comment by Ruth Sponsler — June 26, 2006 @ 5:31 pm

• Hi Samantha and CyberCelt:

  Like Mike, I learned about nuclear power through my involvement in the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. I spent about year in intensive classroom and practical operational training and then spent about five and half years (split into two different tours) in positions where I directly operated and supervised the operation and maintenance of a submarine power plant. For the last 40 months or so of my direct involvement, I was the Engineer Officer of the USS Von Steuben.

  I learned a great deal from that experience - many people characterize the experience of nuclear power school as analogous to drinking from a fire hose. One of the most important aspects of nuclear energy that I learned, however, is pretty simple to explain - a nuclear fission power plant is clean enough to run inside a sealed submarine full of people for months at a time!

  There were some additional simple things that I learned about the technology.

  1. It is possible to put enough fuel on board to last for a decade (or three) and to fit that fuel into a space smaller than my spare bedroom.
  2. The leftovers from that long period of operation will still fit into the same space.
  3. The leftovers can be recycled.
  4. The ships would have otherwise burned diesel fuel, but would have been extremely handicapped by having to come near the surface to ingest oxygen and get rid of exhaust in order to charge batteries that could only provide minimal amounts of power for short periods of time.
  5. The power plants can be made simply enough to be operated round the clock for months at a time by a total of about thirty three people. In that department only four people had college degree and the man in charge was a 27 year old with a BS in English and an MS in Systems Technology.

  From the perspective of the vast majority of people, nuclear fission power can increase prosperity and more evenly spread wealth. The nuclear industry is one that depends more on human education, training, and reliability than it does on ownership or physical control of natural resources. It does not lend itself to dictatorial control by the people with the biggest weapons or the most ruthless desire for wealth.

  I have also learned during the past 15 or so years since I last operated a nuclear power plant that those good things I learned about the technology are a bit scary to people that continue to make vast sums of money by selling coal, oil and natural gas. Those products would be far less important and costly if we were making better use of the nuclear alternatives.

  Like Ruth said, I believe that people that oppose nuclear power in the name of environmentalism are either knowingly or unknowingly helping the fossil fuel industry to maintain its power and wealth. As a modern society, we are not really addicted to oil, we are addicted to energy. A large quantity of the energy that we use that currently comes from oil, coal and natural gas could be provided by nuclear fission, and it can be done cleanly, safely, reliably and less expensively.

  Comment by Rod Adams — June 27, 2006 @ 4:25 am

• Ron,

  The USS Von Steuben sounded awfully familiar. I googled her and saw that she was SSBN 632. My boat was just a tad newer (at least in the numbering scheme). I was a MM1 on the USS Casimir Pulaski, SSBN 633, on the blue crew, when I left her to go back to prototype as an instructor.

  Comment by Mike in Arkansas USA — June 27, 2006 @ 8:20 pm

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